Making payments on the Enlightenment

Sometimes its about the obvious. After decades and decades of pernicious little lies all adding up to a seismic cultural shift which makes it at best, impolite, to state the obvious and at times actually illegal to state things which are simply and undeniably true. True even to the people arresting you and true even to those who pronounce you guilty. So special laws had to be passed to bypass an axiom of Western jurisprudence, the notion that truth is an absolute defense.

Not anymore it isn’t.

People in England and elsewhere are routinely arrested and even jailed for criticizing Islam under the exegesis of racism, or burning a koran etc. even though all admit Islam is not a race, and even though all will admit that criticism of religious authority is the central pillar of Western Civilization and the defining principle of the Enlightenment itself. So laws had to be passed that defined Islam as a protected ideology and could be slurred together with race. As in, “…denigration of race, religion, …etc. etc”

It needs to be pointed out that this took years upon years to be created as it is so clearly antithetical to all of Western legal and philosophical thought and history. But it can be taken down in an afternoon.

Criticizing religious and political authority is not just a right, it is an obligation of free peoples.

Think of it as paying rent on the Enlightenment itself. Countless people were tortured and killed to earn that right for us. All we have to do to preserve it, is use it. But if we fail in this, well we can ask those in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, the Islamic State, Pakistan, now also Turkey, Yemen, Iran and Gaza and countless other countries where criticism of Islam and Islamic authority means  between an automatic jail term to death. To prevent that here, we simply have to have a large percentage of the population freely and publicly entering debates about religious authority, and whichever one we feel is the greatest threat to our civil liberties. An example other than Islam I like is the Sikhs. While I am regularly admonished for my stance on Sikh influence in Canada, I like to remind people that it was they who first destroyed the secularization of our federal institutions by causing the Mulroney Government to allow a Sikh Turban, and presumably other non-secular symbols, to be worn with the uniform of the Federal Police force of Canada.

I predicted at the time to all who would stand still long enough that this would prove to be a disaster and it has. It has now made it orders of magnitude more difficult to argue against the fascist and malevolent symbols of Islam to be integrated into police uniforms across Canada.

While this movement towards religious supremacy has a lot of inertia in Canada and across the world at this time, it’s road paved by terrorism and fueled by political correctness, it can easily be stopped by the most meek among us. The little old lady at the grocery store checkout demanding to know if the food is secretly halal. The student at the cafe wearing a T shirt reminding us of how misogynistic Islam is. The regular joe at the pub discussing islamic influence and scripture in an open, honest, non vulgar way with his buddy at normal volumes and unashamedly.

These actions are your obligations as free people and should be viewed as making maintenance payments on the Enlightenment. Freedom of speech only ever meant one thing. The freedom to openly be critical of religious and political doctrine and authority. It is a use it or lose it right and we are way overdue on that bill. If we have any intention of preserving genuine liberalism, I suggest we start paying it now.

Eeyore for VladTepesBlog